Body Ratios:"Twice round
the thumb is once round the wrist," said the Lilliputians in Gulliver's
Travels. Students here investigate whether or not the Lilliputians, who
used this ratio to make a shirt for the giant Gulliver, were right. The
lesson demonstrates the integrated approach to mathematics that the MATH
Thematics Curriculum takes, with students using and gaining knowledge
and skills in number sense, ratios, fractions, measurement, making predications,
analysis, and geometric concepts. After exploring and interpreting several
different body ratios, students determine how tall Gulliver would be if
a Lilliputian's average height were that of a sixth grader. The lesson
extends to the outdoors, where students make a life-size outline of a
shirt for Gulliver.

Middle Grades MATH Thematics:
The STEM Project: Trashsketball

Content Strand:
Data Analysis

Teacher:Kelly Hankins

School:
Hayes Middle School,
Albuquerque, NM
Grade 7

Project Director:Jim Williamson

40 minutes

Trashsketball: In the MathThematics
Curriculum math concepts are centered around themes that relate to children's
lives. Basketball is the chosen theme for this lesson on data analysis.
The class discusses basketball and the way in which points are scored
as an introduction to a game of their own: Trashketball! Using wads of
paper as a ball and the trash bin as a basket students rotate to different
stations where they can score one, two, or three points. They tally their
scores and once the whistle's blown students make a frequency chart with
the data they have just collected. The teacher writes each person's total
points on the board in a disorganized fashion. As a class they organize
and display the Trashketball scores in a stem-and-leaf plot and a bar
graph. Students analyze the data learning mathematical concepts such as
mean, median, mode, range and cluster. In addition, the power of data
displays is revealed to them as they see how the stem-and-leaf plot provides
exact data whereas the bar graph does not. Afterwards, the class re-plays
the game, only this time using the opposite hand. In pairs, students make
their own stem-and-leaf plots identifying the statistical values previously
learned as a class.